Federal records show Thomas Matthew Crooks used the alias “Bob Dole” to hide online orders before the Trump rally shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Secret Service agents shot and killed him at the scene. A note on his father’s FBI interview says an “anonymous donor paid for cremation.” A family lawyer gave investigators that detail.
Packages to the house included “parts, tools and items to increase the capacity of his rifle,” the same gun his father gave him the morning of the rally. The father told the FBI two days after the shooting that the fake name started after his bank account was hacked. Thomas told his father to use CyberGhost VPN and a BraveNet browser and thought a fake name would stop hacking. His father said the charges still hit a real-name bank account. Crooks kept using fake names anyway.
On July 7, 2024, Mr. Crooks watched his son on a garage camera pacing, arms going up and down, “frantically talking and not making any sense” while cleaning a gun. Crooks made a Glock 19-style pistol on a 3D printer. His father fired one round, feared the frame would blow, and barred him from taking it to the range. Asked about long-distance shooting, Thomas said he wanted to see how far he could shoot with basic sights.
An addendum to an FBI interview summary also states that an “anonymous donor paid for cremation” of Thomas Crooks. The information reportedly came from an attorney representing the Crooks family. The same records noted that Crooks’ father, Matthew, was retired and his wife was on leave from work, while another portion of the interview described Matthew as unemployed at the time of the shooting. Rep. Clay Higgins had previously said the FBI released Crooks’ body for cremation 10 days after the July 13, 2024, shooting.
In a Truth Social post after the records surfaced, President Trump said the FBI under Biden failed to handle the Butler shooting and that by Inauguration Day “most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone.” He asked why the new material was not found earlier, called the attempt a failed “Democrat Plot” to knock him out of the election, and said former FBI Director Christopher Wray “should pay a price” for how the case was handled and for what he said.
